We’re all family and family helps family

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, September 2, 2017

A car sits stranded in high water at Studemont Drive and Allen Parkway as Buffalo Bayou overflows its banks as Tropical Storm Harvey continued to dump rain across the region Tuesday in Houston.

A car sits stranded in high water at Studemont Drive and Allen Parkway as Buffalo Bayou overflows its banks as Tropical Storm Harvey continued to dump rain across the region Tuesday in Houston.

Photo: Michael Ciaglo /Houston Chronicle

We’re all family and family helps family

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A couple of Fridays ago, San Antonio stocked up on tortillas — limit two packs per customer! — and sandwich materials at the H-E-B, bracing itself for unprecedented flooding.

And while a lot of us ended up with a little surplus water, much of it was bottled or bagged in the form of ice having been purchased in case of a tremendous crisis that didn’t hit.

But so many of those around us — in Houston, Rockport, Port Aransas and the smaller communities in between — weren’t so lucky. In much of Texas, things are not going to be business as usual for a long time.

In the coming weeks, there will be stories of heroism and images of human goodness from people just like us all over the state. We will see video of downtown Houston as waters recede and photographs such as the image of the baby cradled by a woman being carried to safety by a man. There will be outpourings of aid from celebrities and schoolchildren. There will be ongoing pleas for help and endless shows of gratitude from people who saw up close how quickly things went from dangerous to catastrophic.

We’ll read the stories of our Texas neighbors who evacuated before the storm and returned to homes they’d been building for a lifetime, now soaked and filled with mud, sludge and mold that will linger for years. And we’ll hear about those who came home to find that everything they’d built and saved is just gone.

As the powers that be work to measure this unprecedented event with unprecedented numbers, the heartbreak around us will keep growing. That’s when those of us in lucky San Antonio should step up.

We pride ourselves on being a friendly, welcoming city every day of the year and maybe it’s because we’re all connected. We’re a place where people know one another because, when they met at St. Mary’s University, they figured out they were both from little communities around Corpus or because they both went to A&M in Galveston. Or because, once in casual conversation, the neighbors shared that they, too, lived in Houston a million years ago.

We reach out to our neighbors because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t have a lot of extra but we have plenty for everyone to have enough, so we share what we have. And if there’s only enough for one, we’ll make it so that it’s enough for two. We look for ways to help in whatever way we can because we know that we’re stronger together. We know this because it’s our culture.

We’ve spent our summers fishing with Rockport and feeling the ocean breeze in our hair with Port Aransas. We’ve prayed in Houston’s hospitals and studied at her schools, shopped her malls and danced at her weddings. And we’ve spent long weekends sleeping on dicey air-mattresses just so we could make a few memories with grandparents, cousins and old friends in small towns such as League City and Richmond.

We really are family. And family — every last member — finds a way to help.